TRAVEL AND LIFESTYLE DIARIES

This is perhaps the best outdoor terrace in Samoëns 1600 – the Le Chariande Restaurant. We discovered this terrace on our descent to Samoëns. You can’t miss this if you take the Marmottes red slope. If you take the Verosse blue run, you can go up to the restaurant with a drag lift. I quickly told the Dutchman that I want to have my terrace break here. I need my day’s dosage of uninterrupted sunshine, happy drink and people watching therapy. In other words, I need to chill. Dutchman wants to go back up the mountain and do more snowboarding runs. That is fine by me. I mean we do not have to be together the whole time. If he wants to reach his snowboarding quota, why not? I have my chill out on the terrace session quota as well =) Le Chariande Restaurant’s outdoor terrace sits on a junction of the Marmotte run just halfway going down to the Chariande Express lift. There is an elevated terrace as well here that gives fantastic views of the slopes and the surrounding mountain areas...

Dutchman and I visited the alpine village of Samoëns from our basecamp in Flaine. The village is part of the Grand Massif ski resort, which is by the way a great place for Nordic walking during summer. We just checked the webcam of Grand Massif and although the skiing season is over, it still is very much white in the Alps. The snow has not melted yet. However, you can only ski on top of the mountains, above the tree line. I guess it’s mainly the locals and the hardcore skiers and snowboarders who do this now. I really wished we have visited the main historical Samoëns village but it will take us some time to get down to the valley and I didn’t like rushing things. I want to take it slow and spend some time cafe terracing and enjoying my surroundings. We also need enough time to get back up the mountain and take a series of connecting lifts and skiing in between to Flaine by 15:00, otherwise we will be stuck here which is not a good thing. This usually means shelling out mone...